LINGOT - an application for tuning instruments

LINGOT is an easy to use, accurate, and highly configurable instrument tuner. This web page is about Windows version of Lingot, ported by gitara.org.pl team.
If you use a different OS, please visit http://www.nongnu.org/lingot.

Requirements

Windows 2000 / XP / Vista, CPU at least around 1GHz at default settings. The calculations do not require a fast CPU, but the GTK GUI seems to be quite CPU heavy on Windows.

Usage

Download the program and run it. You should see its main window as seen on the right. Playing the instrument should cause a clearly visible response on the frequency spectrum plot, provided the input is connected to the sound card, and the mixer is configured properly. It is usually a good idea to set the input volume in such a way, that the signal is strong but the background noise do not cross the dashed line on frequency plot.

The fastest way to tune an out-of-tune instrument is by looking at frequency display on the right side of the window, because it allows to exactly tell how far the sound is from the target frequency. Beware though, that in some circumstances the program may not show the fundamental frequency, but instead lock on some harmonics.

When tuning instruments that are only a little out-of-tune, the easiest way is just to look at the needle, and try to position it in the center.

Frequencies for typical guitar tuning are as follows:

String number

Note

6 (most thick)

E (82,41 Hz)

5

A (110 Hz)

4

d (146,83 Hz)

3

g (196 Hz)

2

b (246,94 Hz)

1 (most thin)

e' (329,63 Hz)

For violin:

String number

Note

4 (most thick)

G (195,56 Hz)

3

D (293,33 Hz)

2

A (440 Hz)

1 (most thin)

E (660 Hz)

Licence

The program is distributed according to the GNU General Public Licence. Source code can be downloaded from our repository: